Home Video Spending On The Rise, As Subscription Streaming Booms

[admin]

The home video industry has managed to record its first rise in consumer spending in years, as both Blu-ray and the booming streaming market helped revenue to rise 2.5% for the first quarter of 2012, according to figures composed by DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group.

While disc based sales were still down, the decline seems to have stabilized, with discs sales down only 1% compared to a year ago. Blu-ray revenue was up 23%, which helped to offset most of the losses from DVD sales. Overall, consumers spend $2.06 billion on disc buys in Q1 2012.

But the real star was subscription based streaming, dominated by Netflix, and to lesser extents by other players including Hulu and Amazon. Revenue rose a spectacular 545.5% to $548.6 million. Video-on-demand services also posted a rise in revenue, but at a much slower pace of 6.8%.

The cloud part of the silver lining was largely caused by the brick-and-mortar disc rental industry, with a decline of 39.4%, and Netflix disc rentals, down 48%. Revenue from Redbox and other kiosk rentals, on the other hand, were up 30.1%.

So the overall pictures points to consumers embracing the new, at the expense of the old, with streaming and VOD playing an ever more important role in video delivery. Even the much maligned UltraViolet cloud based movie storage service managed to increase its number of subscribers to 2 million.

[rago88]

I find the Netflixs thing interesting because here in the US, Many netflixs subscribers I know have gone back to 1 or 2 dvd's out at a time because of netflixs streaming being composed of much older movies..
[they took a hit when they lost the Starz movie contract which did show somewhat 6 months old or more movies.
I hear that complaint alot..... most of there streaming follows no pattern.
ex: a tv show like the big bang theory [7 seasons] will stream season 6, then jump back to season 4 etc where getting the physical disk, u can get all 7 seasons... many of netflixs streaming movies are on par with Comcast or Verizon fios free movies that u get when you sign up for a subscription.
that coupled with the fact that no one here is streaming real High def yet which you get from bluray rentals and even a good 1080i upscaled movie from a standard dvd disk.
but either way, streaming is the future which is now..

[admin]

But for $USD 7.99, and you can't go much wrong with that. A comparable cable TV service here in Australia, without the instant/on-demand part, would set me back $USD 50 per month at least, and that's without any movies. For streaming, the cheapest here is around $USD 16 per month, with hardly any new notable movies, and only 14 different seasons of random HBO TV shows (so Sopranos Season 1, but nothing else after that). It's probably why a lot of people here go through the trouble of getting a VPN and a US credit card just so they can subscribe to Netflix.

If a streaming service had the latest TV shows and maybe some recent (6 month or so) movies, with some available in HD - I would be happy to pay up to $60 per month for such a service. Pity nobody has the guts to bring out a service like this - Big Content very likely afraid that this would cannibalize their sales of both discs and digital content, and with such a small market here, they'll get greedy and try to rip us off as usual. No surprises then that piracy rates here are pretty high.

[rago88]

If your comparing cable vrs streaming [without having cable], then hands down streaming is the better $$$$choice..

but, there's more to tv than movies and with so many channels now,
I can;t even keep up with all the great shows that have appeared in the last few yrs.
Never go to the movies any more..
Lot of tv shows, series, etc especially HBO and Showtime original programing is as good or better than the movies, minus CG graphics which are pretty awsome in movies but can dull the senses after a while.
American TV has really gotten that good..still have pablum for the short attention spanned, but great mature and intelligent writing going on in tv land now.
but in the end, it still always will cost more to subscibe to cable if u want more than just movies.

[admin]

That's what I meant about having the latest TV shows in the $60 package, shows like Game of Thrones, Homeland, Mad Men, because while $7.99 is cheap, but I'd rather pay more to get access to these shows too, and I suspect a lot of other people are willing to do so too.

But even on cable here, we don't have any of these shows as part of any standard package, and even if you add $20 to get the package, the shows are still delayed by a few weeks compared to their original airing date.

[rago88]

correct...
now if you have the patience,[which I don't], many people wait till say,
Hbo's "True Blood" or "Boardwalk Empire" come out on dvd which can be 6 months later or more. and rent the whole series which is kinda nice to kick back and do a whole series over a slow weekend..but, I gotta see these shows when there hot...we get same night broadcast.

I always calll up the cable company here every year and bitch about prices.
to keep me a customer, the pull out the " we will give you HBO,SHOWTIME,Cinemax, and Starz as a package for a year.
$35.00 extra....comes out to less than $10.00 each...
btw:
that is on top of my triple play for 99.00 month which is HD tv with a gazillion channels., Internet and unlimited phone service...
So, I'm in for approx 4- $5.00 a day for all that...
I spend that much on takeout coffee each day and it;s gone in 10 minutes.
The 5.00 a day it cost me for the whole deal lasts 24hrs a day, 7 days a week.. Constant entertainment on tv and Internet without having to leave the house... I guess for people like me, it's well worth it.